A hard decision

Sharing in hopes we can avoid others like it.   [Mother Jones]( MoJo Reader, The short of it: We need to raise about $195,000 in the next five days to finish the year on track. That’s a lot. And it’s true that December usually ends with a big [deadline-driven surge in giving](, but we’ve been struggling to match the numbers we have been seeing with these emails of late, so I’m worried that we might come up way short. With fewer people paying attention to the news, we need people like you who still are to consider [supporting our journalism]( if there’s any way you can right now. It is [staggeringly hard]( managing the finances of a newsroom, and we simply can’t afford to come up short on these fundraising goals and end up with a bigger gap than can be filled. There is no cushion in our razor-thin budget—no backup, no alternative sources of revenue to balance our books. And one of the challenges of being transparent with you about this all is communicating the legitimate urgency of our fundraising without making it sound like we're about to fall off a cliff, but also making clear that [your support is truly needed]( to stay back from that [cliff edge](. So as we enter the final stretch, and really need to see an [outpouring of support](, I wanted to share a concrete example of the painful decisions we have to make if we aren’t able to bring [the donations we’re literally banking on](. Earlier this year, our senior video producer, Mark Helenowski, moved on to the next stage of his career. Mark came to Mother Jones as part of our filmmakers in residence experiment back in 2017. We wanted him to help our reporters translate their amazing investigations to another format so we could reach even more people: Not everyone wants to read an in-depth story, but a lot of people will watch a powerful video. It’s especially critical to be multimedia and multi-platformed (on TikTok, Instagram, etc.) to reach the young, diverse audience that is the future of this country and of Mother Jones. His work blew us away and he helped Mother Jones level-up in immeasurable ways. Alongside reporter Julia Lurie, Mark [spent time]( with cops, drug users, and dealers in suburban Baltimore to try to understand the impact of the opioid epidemic. He [filmed]( the spontaneous airport protests to greet separated migrant children, and documented how [some families]( were able to reunite. He [followed]( the “Road to Change” bus tour that brought Parkland school shooting and other gun violence survivors to dozens of congressional districts ahead of the 2018 midterms. He [showed]( exactly how YouTube was spreading hoaxes. An absolute favorites was his [animation]( showing how wealthy Mike Bloomberg actually is (you HAVE to watch it to appreciate it). He [came back]( to the billionaire genre to show just how much richer the superrich got during the pandemic. He teamed up with reporter Hannah Levintova to [investigate]( the stock trading app Robinhood’s mind games. He worked on so many of our big, signature investigations to tell a more powerful story that reaches people we might not otherwise reach. And in perhaps his most ambitious project of all, he created a 17-minute [documentary]( as part of reporter Samantha Michaels’ investigation of how “failure to protect” laws put domestic abuse survivors in prison for much longer sentences than their abusers. That project, which took a year to report and has sparked responses from legislators and law enforcement officials all around the country, has been honored with several prestigious journalism awards, including the National Magazine Award for Best Video (beating out the likes of National Geographic and the New York Times.) Perhaps you can see the challenge? Great video journalism that reaches wide, and new, audiences (and wins awards!) is not cheap. And dedicating a year of reporting to a story instead of churning out cheap crap, quality over quantity, is even more expensive. So, about those hard choices: When Mark decided to take a break from journalism to focus on his other filmmaking passions, we weren’t able to fill his important and impactful position. And even after [the awesome news]( that Mother Jones is growing and will be able to do more powerful reporting like this, across platforms, we still don’t have the luxury to hire a full-time video producer like Mark. It doesn’t mean we’ve given up on video, quite the contrary; producer Sam Van Pykeren, an alum of our fellowship program, has been doing [amazing work]( and coaching our reporters to do the same. Creator in residence [Garrison Hayes](, a pastor-turned-journalist, has cranked out a whole series of fantastic pieces on topics from [Clarence Thomas’ organizing belief]( to the meaning of [reparations]( to the Tennessee legislature’s unprecedented [expulsion]( of two Black lawmakers. And when he gets racist responses on social platforms, he takes those on with [more facts](. Our team’s scrappiness, honestly, is astonishing. We punch above our weight and budget in ways that boggle the mind every day. And our only limiting factor is how much money we’re able to realistically [bring in]( so that we can pay for it all without going into the red for too long. That’s why it’s so important to raise the $195,000 in [online donations]( we need over the next five days. And I really need to see an encouraging response from this email if we’re going to have any chance of getting there. So I'll finish where I started: With fewer people paying attention to the news, we need people like you who still are to consider [supporting our journalism]( if there’s any way you can right now. [If you can, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation today](—and please do it before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think, "I'll get to it later." It’s crunch time, and we still have a huge gap between where we are and where we need to be. Whether you can [pitch in $5, $50, or $500](, it all matters and makes Mother Jones possible when combined with your fellow readers. Thanks for reading, and for everything you do to make Mother Jones what it is. Onward, [Monika Bauerlein, CEO] Monika Bauerlein, CEO Mother Jones [Donate](   [Mother Jones]( [Donate]( [Donate Monthly]( [Subscribe]( This message was sent to {EMAIL}. 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